The Blogfinger Grammarian: democrats vs. Democrats

Are the Democrats democrats? That question arose this week when the leader of the Neptune Democratic Club tried to prevent a group of Ocean Grovers from expressing their opinion at a Club meeting. One of those Grovers said later that the meeting was “undemocratic.”

But here are two other questions: Are Republicans democrats? Are Democrats republicans? While the answer to that first question may be unclear, the answers to the latter two questions are, for the most part, “yes” and “yes.”

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about what the names of our two major parties actually mean. Here’s some history. In the beginning, the United States was non-partisan – that is, it had no political parties. The writers of the Constitution didn’t want parties to take root here, as they had in England. George Washington was not a member of a party while he was President.

But because of a policy split within Washington’s administration, we soon had a Federalist Party (led by Alexander Hamilton) and then a Democratic-Republican Party (led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson). After the Federalists went into decline, there arose the pro-Andrew Jackson Democrats and the anti-slavery Republicans, and although the policies of those two parties have altered in various ways over time, the names have stuck. But what do those names mean? What did they ever mean?

Well, a republic (notice the lower-case “r”) is a government that’s not a monarchy or a dictatorship, but rather is run by officials elected by the “public.” After the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had completed its work, a group of citizens gathered around Benjamin Franklin and asked him, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

A democracy (again, small “d”) is technically a government in which all the citizens make public policy. But really, it’s almost always a “representative democracy” rather than a “pure” one, which is to say we elect people to make laws and run things, and if a majority of us don’t like the way they do that, we kick them out. Not much distinction, really, between that and a republic.

In a 1964 convention speech, President Lyndon Johnson, quoting Jefferson, said, “We are all Democrats. We are all Republicans.” But Johnson misquoted Jefferson. What our third President actually said, at his 1801 inauguration, was this: “We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists.” (Federalism refers to a system in which power is shared between a central authority, the “federal” government, and other units within that – states or provinces).

What I say is, we are all republicans, we are all democrats, we are all federalists. But what I also say is, Jefferson and Johnson both had their capitalization wrong; they were referring to republicans small-r, democrats small-d and federalists small-f.

And that is today’s language lesson: when you’re referring to members of the Democratic Party, it’s upper-case D. When you’re referring to “democrats” meaning people who believe in “democracy,” the d is lower case.

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6 Responses

What is true is that the modern Democrat Party is no longer the party of FDR. The (fiscally) conservative wing of the Democrat Party (aka Blue Dogs) almost no longer exist. In the Republican Party, the Conservative wing has been pushed aside in favor of moderate RINO’s who want to spend like the liberal wing of the Democrat Party

Yet, the country is still a center right country. Most polls show that conservatives make up the largest portion of the electorate.

CL You left out the part where the Democratic Party is often referred to as the Democrat Party. Members of that party don’t like to be called the latter; it is often employed as a sly insult by Repubs who don’t want to allow the Dems to enjoy the adjective democratic.

As somebody you know said the other day, calling the Dems the Democrat Party is “very Fox News.”

PG (butting in from the apolitical Blogfinger compound at the North End.)

Paul — According to Wikipedia: “‘Democrat Party’ is a political epithet used in the United States instead of ‘Democratic Party’ when talking about the Democratic Party. The term has been used in negative or hostile fashion by conservative commentators and members of the Republican Party.”
However, although we’ve all heard this phrase used as a put-down, the Wikipedia article notes that in the past it had sometimes been used, especially in parts of the Northeast, as a neutral term by Democrats themselves.
That surprised me. Growing up in the South back when it was the “solid South,” I never heard anyone speak of the “Democrat party.” The first time it came to my ears was from the mouths of Republicans. I remember Bob Dole using the term with evident relish in the ’90s. I can’t remember whether Bush One used it or not; I think he did. Reagan, I dunno.

Maxster: We rejected your last comments because they violated a number of our policies. I tried to email you, but the email you gave us was rejected also. Here is a copy of that email to you from us at Blogfinger:

“Maxster: We are trying to stay away from national politics. My reference to the big D little d issue was more of a humor comment than anything else. We don’t even want to get into Neptune politics, but the Mary Beth story forced us into exploring some of that.

We try to be fair and balanced in rejecting national politics in our comments section; we are not perfect, and as a blog, we have every right to be flexible or even to take sides in certain situations, but you won’t find us posting articles about national issues, unless they spill over into Ocean Grove. Even when the pavilion and auditorium controversies became national news, the most we did was post a picture of a Fox News truck in front of the GA and some articles and editorials from a local viewpoint.” If you want to debate national topics and political mayhem, then you will have to do that elsewhere.

I hope this clarifies what we are about. You also should read the “policies” page at the top of our home screen. Paul @Blogfinger